Did we just pay for the war ?

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gunrunner

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Well ive always had this theory that when this Araqi thing happened that all the governments from around the world could pocket out of the oil fields . Being that Araq was the 3rd highest oil producing nation in the world and being corrupt that they were only ever released about 10% of it . So when it was overtaken all of a sudden the price goes through the roof now they have control of all this extra oil . Usually its the less there is the more it costs and not the other way round and alot of businesses have hit the wall because of this .
At the hight of it , it was $30NZD to fill the Max now less than $20NZD .
But what has changed ? The experts tell us the world is running out of oil , how do we know we just believe what they tell us .:ummm:
 
That's what I keep thinking... what has really changed in the past year to make this economy so bad? Gas prices are finally cheaper. There have been quite a few people that have lost their homes. Some have been to high risk loans and some to people that simply live beyond their means. The oil prices shot up just like Al Gore was hoping. He was trying to make the whole global warming thing look worse than it is, and he wanted to create this inflated price of oil to force people to use less oil. Oil speculators are to blame on this inflated price, people started basically buying shares of oil, and as the gas prices went up, people kept buying more. I feel the freaking media is the worst of them all..... the worse things are in the local area, state, conuntry, and even the world... the more people listen. The media is trying to make money of course and the more people buy into their crap, the more people get worried, and the more people start to hold back and actually create a recession.
The economy will always have it's ups and downs, the media just creates higher highs and lower lows.
 
The media will continue to trash-talk the economy & the country in general until after the inaugeration in January. Then all of the sudden, the sun will shine again & the birds will sing & the economy will be on the right track "finally". I don't know about you all .but the wife & I are doing better than ever & we're just a lowly mechanic & a social worker. I wouldn't know the economy was terrible if I didn't watch the news - Yes I know the mortgage industry is in a shambles ( thanks to the Community Reinvestment Act ), but it will adjust itself - it was overvalued & due for an adjustment anyway. And Yes, we're having layoffs at my work too, but we STILL have a lot of dead-wood floating around & leaching from the rest of us. I can't help but think that most of the doom&gloom stories in the media are nothing more that politics. But what do I know - I'm just a lowly mechanic. :biglaugh:
 
Obama definitely has the press in his back pocket.

We're not doing bad either Rich. I think it's easy to get caught up in national problems but you almost need to break it down city by city. Omaha isn't doing too badly.
 
where a few years away...i can see some are felling pretty good and living in a bubble because they feel like there not effected.......just hope your not affected over time...because is you have to put your tail between your legs and start looking for a job anything ....so you dont lose your home...kids education ect...you would not be so fucken cocky
 
Not cocky, confident. Work is good, not spending a lot of money, not using credit card.
 
Wife & I have always lived within our means - never bought the biggest house or a new car - always had a little breathing room. Never lived the high life, but I'm comfortable now because of it. Just a personal choice. Not putting others down. My ancestors were dirt poor from the Mtns. of W. Virginia - they raised me to survive in their world.
 
Not cocky, confident. Work is good, not spending a lot of money, not using credit card.


A lot of it has to do with where you live. Housing prices around SiouxFalls, SD have not been hit as bad as some of the bigger cities. There is minimal job losses here. And the amount of foreclosures and bankruptcies in this area has not risen or dropped like in the larger cities.
I also have a brother who works in Omaha. The housing there has taken a hit. But again they are not suffering as bad as the coastal states and auto ind. states.

My family will fortunately not be affected by this mess going on right now. But it is definitely frustrating to see a lot of people paying for others mistakes and enormous mismanagement of finances that have been going on for quite some time now.
What really blows my mind it that most of these companies saw it coming and did nothing about. Now let the taxpayers bail us out.
 
At the hight of it , it was $30NZD to fill the Max now less than $20NZD .
But what has changed ? The experts tell us the world is running out of oil , how do we know we just believe what they tell us .:ummm:

Stock market has a lot to do with it. And yes the media has a big play on it.
 
This may help you understand what is happening.


This Is Not A Normal Recession
Moving On To Plan B
By Mike Whitney
11-23-8


"The Winter of 2008-2009 will prove to be the winter of global economic discontent that marks the rejection of the flawed ideology that unregulated global financial markets promote financial innovation, market efficiency, unhampered growth and endless prosperity while mitigating risk by spreading it system wide." Economists Paul Davidson and Henry C.K. Liu "Open Letter to World Leaders attending the November 15 White House Summit on Financial Markets and the World Economy"


The global economy is being sucked into a black hole and most Americans have no idea why. The whole problem can be narrowed down to two words; "structured finance".

Structured finance is a term that designates a sector of finance where risk is transferred via complex legal and corporate entities. It's not as confusing as it sounds. Take a mortgage-backed security (MBS), for example.

The mortgage is issued by a bank (the loan originator) which then sells the mortgage to a brokerage where it is chopped up into tranches (pieces of the loan) and sold in a pool of mortgages to investors that are looking for a rate that is greater than Treasurys or similar investments.

The process of transforming debt ("the mortgage") into a security is called securitization.

At one time, the MBS was a reasonably safe investment because the housing market was stable and there were relatively few foreclosures. Thus, the chance of losing one's investment was quite small.

In the early years of the Bush administration, Wall Street took advantage of the gigantic flow of capital coming into the country ($700 billion per year via the current account deficit) by creating more and more MBSs and selling them to foreign banks, hedge funds and insurance companies.

It was real gold rush. Because the banks were merely the mortgage originators, they didn't believe their own money was at risk, so they gradually lowered lending standards and issued millions of loans to unqualified applicants who had no job, no collateral and a bad credit history.

Securitization was such a hit, that by 2005, nearly 80 percent of all mortgages were securitized and the traditional criteria for getting a mortgage was abandoned altogether.

Subprimes, Alt-As and ARMs flourished, while the "30 year fixed" went the way of the Dodo. Lenders were no longer constrained by "creditworthiness"; anyone with a pulse and a pen could get approved. The mortgages were then shipped off to Wall Street where they were sold to credulous investors.

The disaggregation of risk--spreading the risk to many investors via securitization--was as much of a factor in the creation of "the largest equity bubble in history", as the banks lax lending standards or Greenspan's low interest rates.

By spreading risk throughout the system, securitization keeps interest rates artificially low because the real risks are not properly priced.

The low interest rates, in turn, stimulate speculation which results in equity bubbles. Eventually, credit expansion leads to crisis when borrowers can no longer make the interest payments on their loans and defaults spiral out of control.

This forces massive deleveraging (sell offs) and the fire-sale of assets in illiquid (cash strapped) markets. As assets lose value, prices fall and the economy enters a deflationary cycle.

There are many types of of structured instruments including asset-backed securities (ABS), mortgage-backed securities (MBS), collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) and collateralized loan obligations (CLOs) all of which provide a revenue stream from loans that were chopped into tranches and turned into securities.

There are many problems with these complex securities, the biggest of which is that there is no way to unravel the individual pools of loans to isolate the bad paper.

That's why subprime mortgages had such a destructive affect on the secondary market, because--even though subprimes only defaulted at a rate of roughly 5 percent--MBS sales slumped nearly 90 percent.

Why? Former Secretary of the Treasury Paul O'Neill explained it like this: "It's like you have 8 bottles of water and just one of them has arsenic in it. It becomes impossible to sell any of the other bottles because no one knows which one contains the poison."

Exactly right. So why weren't these structured debt-instruments "stress tested" before the markets were reworked and the financial system became so dependent on them?

Greed. Because the real purpose of these exotic investments is not to provide true value to the buyer, but to maximize profits for the seller by increasing leverage.

That is the real purpose of MBS, CDOs and all the other bizarre-sounding derivatives; higher profits with less capital. It's a scam. Here's how it works: A mortgage applicant buys a house for $400,000 and puts 10 percent down. His mortgage is sold to Wall Street, chopped into pieces, and stitched together in a pool of similar loans. Now the brokerage can use the debt as if it were an asset, borrowing at ratios of 20 or 30 to 1 to fatten the bottom line. When Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were taken into conservatorship by the government, they were leveraged at an eye-popping 100 to 1.

This shows that nearly an infinite amount of debt can be precariously balanced atop a paltry amount of capital.

This explains why the $4 trillion aggregate value of the 5 big investment banks and the $1.7 trillion value of the hedge funds is now vanishing more quickly than it was created. Once the mighty gears of structured finance shift into reverse, deleveraging begins with a vengeance pulling trillions into a credit vacuum.

It all started when two Bear Stearns hedge funds defaulted in July 2006 and there were no offers for their MBS and other structured investments. Panic quickly spread to every corner of Wall Street as the alchemists of modern finance began to see that their worst nightmare might be realized, that trillions of dollars of Frankenstein investments could be worth nothing at all.

Since the Bear Stearns funds fiasco, there have been huge explosions in the financial markets. Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Wachovia, Washington Mutual, Indybank, AIG, Lehman Bros and other industry giants have either gone under or been forced into shotgun weddings by the FDIC. The stock market has plunged over 40 percent and suffered wild gyrations not seen since the 1930s. The entire Wall Street landscape has changed completely. Investment banking is no longer a viable business model; the Big 5 have either vanished or transformed themselves into holding companies to escape short sellers. The hedge funds have been deleveraging with a ferocity that has sent sent stocks and commodities crashing. In one day last week, the stock market plunged 300 points in the morning only to bounce back 550 points a few hours later; a whopping 850 point-spread in one trading day! No one but a madman would dabble in this market. Cautious investors have pulled up stakes and moved to the safety of Treasurys. Meanwhile, the financial tsunami is roaring through the real economy where consumer confidence has plummeted, unemployment is soaring and retail sales have fallen to historic lows. The downdraft from the financial markets has flattened Main Street and set the stage for a humongous $500 billion stimulus package to be delivered in the first few months of the Obama administration. The meltdown appears to be playing out much like Henry Paulson anticipated. According to Bloomberg News : "Shortly after leaving Wall Street as Goldman Sachs' CEO, Henry Paulson was at Camp David warning the president and his staff of "over-the-counter derivatives as an example of financial innovation that could, under certain circumstances, blow up in Wall Street's face and affect the whole economy." (PAUL B. FARRELL, "30 reasons for Great Depression 2 by 2011", MarketWatch)

So far, the Federal Reserve has provided nearly $2 trillion through its lending facilities just to keep the financial system upright. The Treasury is currently distributing $700 billion to key banks and other financial institutions that are perceived to be "too big to fail". In truth, the "too big to fail" mantra is a just public relations hoax to conceal the web of counterparty deals that make it impossible for one institution to fail without dominoing through the rest of the system and wreaking havoc. That's why AIG is still on life-support with regular injections of taxpayer money; because it had roughly $4 trillion of credit default swaps (structured "hedges" that are not traded on a regulated exchange) for which AIG does not have sufficient capital reserves. In other words, the taxpayer is now paying the debts of an insurance company that didn't set aside the money to pay its claims. (As yet, No SEC indictments for securities fraud) In fact, the Fed and Treasury are now providing a backstop for the entire structured finance system which is frozen solid and shows no sign of thawing any time soon.

This is not a normal recession, which is a downturn in the business cycle and "a period of reduced economic activity" usually brought on by a mismatch between supply and demand. (that ends in two quarters of negative growth) The present situation is much more grave; it is the utter destruction of a system that was developed fairly recently and has proven to be thoroughly dysfunctional. It cannot withstand the effects of tighter credit or adverse market conditions. This is not a cyclical downturn; the structured finance system has collapsed leaving behind a multi-trillion dollar capital hole that is bringing the broader economy to its knees.

One by one, we have seen the structured instruments fail; mortgage-backed securities (MBS), collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), credit default swaps (CDS), commercial paper (CP), auction rate securities. Now we are seeing investors boycott anything related to structured investments. This is from Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis:

"There were NO sales of bonds backed by credit-card payments in October, the first time since 1993, when the asset-backed securities market was in its infancy. Yields on top-rated credit card bonds relative to benchmark interest rates reached a record high of 525 basis points more than the London interbank offered rate, or Libor, last week, according to Bank of America Corp. data."

Wall Street has turned off the faucet for securitized investments. That market is toast. The only reason that Libor and the other gauges of interbank lending have normalized is because the Fed guaranteed money markets and commercial paper. It has nothing to do with trust between the banks themselves. There is no trust. Even so, the banks are not capable of making up for the vast amount of credit which was produced by the now-defunct investment banks and hedge funds which are constrained by losses of nearly $3.5 trillion; half of their total value. In the best case scenario, bank credit will only shrink 15 or 20 percent, which will put the US on track for a deep "18 month to 2 year" recession rather than another Great Depression.

Paulson's attempt to divert $30 billion to non-bank financial institutions to revive loan securitization when there is no appetite among investors for such structured junk is pure folly. More troubling, is that neither Paulson nor Bernanke have a Plan B; an alternate scheme for rebuilding the financial markets on a solid, sustainable foundation rather than low interest rates and pools of debt. Everything they have done so far, suggests that they are focused on one thing alone; inflating another equity bubble. "Inflate or die", as the saying goes; and Bernanke intends to achieve this objective using the same tools that brought us to the brink of catastrophe. Here's a clip from a recent speech by Bernanke which shows his determination to prop up the broken system:

"The ability of financial intermediaries to sell the mortgages they originate into the broader capital market by means of the securitization process serves two important purposes: First, it provides originators much wider sources of funding than they could obtain through conventional sources, such as retail deposits; second, it substantially reduces the originator's exposure to interest rate, credit, prepayment, and other risks associated with holding mortgages to maturity, thereby reducing the overall costs of providing mortgage credit."

Sorry, Ben, the funding has dried up and the banks have shown no interest in going back to the days of conventional "30-year fixed" mortgages. It's a dead letter. The Fed and Treasury need to stop looking for ways to reflate the bubble and work to restore confidence in the markets by increasing regulation and reducing the amount of leverage that's allowable to 12 to 1. After all, it's no coincidence that AIG, Fannie and Freddie, Lehman Bros, General Motors, General Electric have all fallen off a cliff at the very same time. They are all victims of the same low interest, easy money finance swindle which allowed them to roll over huge amounts of short-term debt at artificially low cost. When Bear blew up; lending tightened, demand weakened, and credit was flushed from the system at an unprecedented pace. Borrowing short for long-term investments is not feasible when credit becomes scarce, but it's not because the banks aren't lending. That's just another myth that keeps the public from seeing what's really going on. As Jon Hilsenrath points out in his Wall Street Journal article, "Banks Keep Lending, but that isn't easing the crisis", that is not the case:

"Banks actually are lending at record levels. Their commercial and industrial loans, at $1.6 trillion in early November, were up 15% from a year earlier and grew at a 25% annual rate during the past three months, according to weekly Federal Reserve data. Home-equity loans, at $578 billion, were up 21% from a year ago and grew at a 48% annual rate in three months....The numbers point to one of the great challenges of the crisis. The credit crunch is surely real, but it is complex and not easily managed. Banks are lending, but they're also under serious strain as they act as backstops to a larger problem -- the breakdown of securities markets..The worst of the credit crisis is being felt not in banks but in financial markets..."

The banks are not to blame. There is a generalized contraction of credit in the non-bank financial system where structured finance has blown up and taken half of Wall Street with it. It's the end of an era. Here's how economist Henry C. K. Liu sums it up in his "Open Letter to World Leaders attending the November 15 White House Summit on Financial Markets and the World Economy":

"Neoliberal economists in the last three decades have denied the possibility of a replay of the worldwide destructiveness of the Great Depression that followed the collapse of the speculative bubble created by unfettered US financial markets of the 'Roaring Twenties'. They fooled themselves into thinking that false prosperity built on debt could be sustainable with monetary indulgence. Now history is repeating itself, this time with a new, more lethal virus that has infested deregulated global financial markets with 'innovative' debt securitization, structured finance and maverick banking operations flooded with excess liquidity released by accommodative central banks. A massive structure of phantom wealth was built on the quicksand of debt manipulation. This debt bubble finally imploded in July 2007 and is now threatening to bring down the entire global financial system to cause an economic meltdown unless enlightened political leadership adopts coordinated corrective measures on a global scale."

Rome is burning. It's time to stop tinkering with a failed system and move on to "Plan B" before it's too late.
 
Well ive always had this theory that when this Araqi thing happened that all the governments from around the world could pocket out of the oil fields . Being that Araq was the 3rd highest oil producing nation in the world and being corrupt that they were only ever released about 10% of it . So when it was overtaken all of a sudden the price goes through the roof now they have control of all this extra oil . Usually its the less there is the more it costs and not the other way round and alot of businesses have hit the wall because of this .
At the hight of it , it was $30NZD to fill the Max now less than $20NZD .
But what has changed ? The experts tell us the world is running out of oil , how do we know we just believe what they tell us .:ummm:
Just look at the record profits that the oil companies made, and you'll understand that we didn't pay for the war through increased oil prices.
 
Just look at the record profits that the oil companies made, and you'll understand that we didn't pay for the war through increased oil prices.

How do we know this for sure as there are alot of contractors etc that get imployment out of going to war , these companies make 100,000,000s in a few years because of this:bang head:
 
How do we know this for sure as there are alot of contractors etc that get imployment out of going to war , these companies make 100,000,000s in a few years because of this:bang head:

Yes, war does create jobs. It is good business. I'm not denying that.

But with the oil empire's profits, and the national debt through the roof, I'm just not seeing that the spike in gas prices paid for the war.
 
Yes, war does create jobs. It is good business. I'm not denying that.

But with the oil empire's profits, and the national debt through the roof, I'm just not seeing that the spike in gas prices paid for the war.

It makes you think that with all that newly required oil and yet the price still rose . Not releasing it til they needed to and buy then the price had soared meaning there was less available , certain people made billions and it wasnt the public .
 
War makes profits for the private interests that materially and logistically provision and enable the war effort.

The war is not paid for.

The war is funded by a giant credit card bearing the names of all American taxpayers.

The debt can not be paid off in the lifetime of any living citizen of the United States of America.

The debt will have to be paid off by the children and the children's children of every living citizen of the United States of America.

It will not be paid of in their lifetimes.

Through fabricated wars the private interests that own, operate and manipulate the U.S. military industrial complex consolidate for themselves the wealth of a nation and it's future generations.

The citizens are perpetually enslaved to debt and remain slavishly grateful for the meager wages generated by the conflict.
 
Fabricated war? So you're telling me that I'm over here fighting a fabricated war?



:rofl_200:



You listen to what the television tells you, and you actually believe it. I, however, get my information from what I see over here, day in and day out. Let me tell you, you're truth and mine are nothing alike.
 
Fabricated war? So you're telling me that I'm over here fighting a fabricated war?



:rofl_200:



You listen to what the television tells you, and you actually believe it. I, however, get my information from what I see over here, day in and day out. Let me tell you, you're truth and mine are nothing alike.

I agree, people need to think for themselves a little more... how does that old saying go... Believe 1/2 of what you see and 1/4 of what you hear".. something like that. Everyone serving in the forces sees things first hand. I'll trust them any day of the week over what I hear from the media. Why don't you think the media interviews the military more often.... because the truth might come out. Our military is over there putting their lives on the line so our crappy media can utilize their freedom of speech and put their twised spin on things to spark contraversy.
 
Fabricated war? So you're telling me that I'm over here fighting a fabricated war?



:rofl_200:



You listen to what the television tells you, and you actually believe it. I, however, get my information from what I see over here, day in and day out. Let me tell you, you're truth and mine are nothing alike.

Yes, fabricated.

I am not suggesting that these wars are not taking place, that they are unreal. Nor am I suggesting that they are co-incidental or accidental.

I am saying that they are deliberate fabrications that are purposefully made, devised and conceived, by art or skill and labor; carefully constructed by assembling parts or sections to serve a particular purpose, to the material benefit of the fabricators - just as the parts of a house will not assemble themselves into a fabricated house without a design, builders, tradespeople, marketers and financiers.

The house analogy is particularly appropriate when you consider that whether fabricating a house or a war, the financier makes the most profit, for the least effort and the least risk.

What follows should give you some insight into why you are in Afghanistan and why you will stay in there at the direction of President Obama.

Sourced from http://www.skolnicksreport.com/pplots1.html
Begin qoute

"Starting in the 1990s, even before that, two groups made their plans as to the Caspian Sea energy area, Afghanistan, and the southern Balkans. Oil engineers obviously knew that in a few short decades, the oil reserves of Saudi Arabia will be played out. A growing market for oil and natural gas is Pakistan, Red China, and points east, like Japan.

The Caspian area is there to be exploited. Oil, natural gas. One pipeline was planned through the southern Balkans, the split-apart area formerly called simply Yugoslavia.

Following the fabrication and execution of the Balkans War (on Bill Clinton's watch), Milosevic was grabbed and put in custody of a purported "International Tribunal". In danger of his life, he has made little-noticed statements that would incriminate the British in what went on in Serbia. So, with the southern Balkans pipeline plan thus safely in U.S./British control, the next item was the other pipeline plan, as a short-cut through Afghanistan.

For some years two different groups each as rivals, had their own pipeline plan through Afghanistan, such as for natural gas from the former Soviet province of Turkmenistan. One pipeline consortium was headed by Union Oil of California, UNOCAL, tightly linked financially to the Bush Family.

"A senior delegation from the Taleban movement in Afghanistan is in the United States for talks with an international energy company that wants to construct a gas pipeline from Turkmenistan across Afghanistan to Pakistan. A spokesman for the company, Unocal, said the Taleban were expected to spend several days at the company's headquarters in Sugarland, Texas. Unocal says it has agreements both with Turkmenistan to sell its gas and with Pakistan to buy it." As published by BBC NEWS, under a headline "World: West Asia, Taleban in Texas for talks on gas pipeline", December 4, 1997.

And the BBC story continued: "But, despite the civil war in Afghanistan, Unocal has been in competition with an Argentinian firm, Bridas, to actually construct the pipeline. Last month, the Argentinian firm, Bridas, announced that it was close to signing a two-billion dollar deal to build the pipeline, which would carry gas 1,300 kilometres from Turkmenistan to Pakistan, across Afghanistan. In May, Taleban-controlled radio Kabul said a visiting delegation from an Argentinian company had announced that pipeline construction would start 'soon'. The radio has reported several visits to Kabul by Unocal and Bridas company officials over the past few months."

As the BBC story added about Unocal, "It has commissioned the University of Nebraska to teach Afghan men the technical skills needed for pipeline construction. Nearly 140 people were enrolled last month in Kandahar and Unocal plans to hold training courses for women in administrative skills. Although the Taleban authorities only allow women to work in the health sector, organisers of the training say they haven't so far raised any objections."

Top Taliban officials, on behalf of Osama bin Laden, continued to negotiate with the George W. Bush White House right up to within a few weeks of September 11, 2001. Basically, Osama and his cohorts were demanding a bigger slice of the pipeline deal crossing Afghanistan than offered by the Bush White House jointly with Unocal. Under these circumstances, it is foolish for Bush and his underlings to claim that did not know where Osama bin Laden was. Hey, they were negotiating with him! So the alternative stories in the U.S. and in the foreign press of PRIOR KNOWLEDGE of the attack September 11, 2001, have to be considered.

Pertinent details of the Bush/Osama bin Laden pipeline negotiations are in a book that is a sensation in Europe. Thoroughly-researched and heavily-documented by two known French authors, the book, so far printed in French, is "Bin Laden: The Forbidden Truth" by Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie. A few points made in the book:

1. The authors interviewed John O'Neill, originally from Chicago, Deputy Director of FBI. O'Neill was ordered by Bush to back off terrorist-related investigations while the oil pipeline negotiations with Osama bin Laden were underway. O'Neill was considered the leading counter-terrorist expert in the U.S. government. Disgruntled by the Bush order, O'Neill resigned in July, 2001, and soon thereafter became the head of security---get this---of the World Trade Center in New York. His first day of work, September 11, 2001.

At all times George W. Bush knew where Osama was, with whom he was negotiating, and could have at any time had him arrested.

2. Bush conveyed to Osama bin Laden that if he and the Taliban accepted the Unocal pipeline offer [in which the Bush Family had a heavy stake], that Osama would get "a carpet of gold" or if he refused, "a carpet of bombs". [Notice that the U.S. bombers later carpet-bombed Afghanistan.] Some details about the French book are in the Village Voice, week of January 2-8, 2002 [www.villagevoice.com] entitled "The French Connection". According to this story, the book points out that Bush told other countries, during the summer of 2001, that he is planning to go to war against Afghanistan in October, 2001.

Reportedly continuing, however, after the Bush/Unocal/Osama deal went sour, were the negotiations of Osama and Taliban with the rival consortium headed by the Argentine firm, Bridas. Some background necessary to understand the Argentina connection.

The International Monetary Fund, IMF, is a mostly misleading title. It is primarily an adjunct and creature of the U.S. Treasury and the White House, jointly with the London money center banks. In the past, numerous requests for bail-out funds were granted by IMF, that is, by the U.S., to Brazil, to Argentina, and to others.

Remember. At one time England had an armlock on the infrastructure and finances of Argentina, such as in their capital, Buenos Aires. The subway there, the waterworks, the public utilities, originally were owned and exploited by British absentee owners. Then came 1982. Argentina seized the Falkland Islands, which they called the Malvinas, contending they belonged historically to Argentina. Between Argentina and the Falklands were discovered great sources of offshore oil, claimed by Argentina.

Expecting a war, the Vatican Bank had given billions of dollars to Argentina, disguised as from Banco Ambrosiano, a major Italian bank. The purpose was for Argentina to purchase, as they did, from France and elsewhere, Exocet missiles and other exotic weapons with which the Argentines later attacked the few major warships that the British still had. A certain area in and around the Falklands was designated by both sides as the "war zone". In violation of designated NEUTRAL territory, the British, using U.S. satellite imagery, had one of their submarines (maybe actually a U.S. submarine) torpedo and sink the major ship of the Argentine fleet in the NEUTRAL ZONE, the cruiser "Belgrano". Over eight hundred unsuspecting Argentine sailors were thus killed.

The head of Banco Ambrosiano, blamed for not keeping the Vatican Bank-Argentine funds adequately secret, was found murdered, hanging under Blackfriars' Bridge, London. In the U.S., network television reporter, Jessica Savitch, did a documentary on the murder and related matters of the Italian banker. Later, she herself was murdered along with her boyfriend, a top media executive. The press whores explained it away as a supposed accident, as if their car somehow fell into a canal and they drowned. One problem. The canal was dry. [Some details are in the book "Golden Girl: The Story of Jessica Savitch" by Alanna K. Nash, paperback edition.]

By December, 2001, here was the situation. As to Argentina, "Most major utilities in the country are Spanish-owned...The largest oil company in Argentina is Spanish-owned. In all, Spanish companies have some $39 Billion invested in Argentina, more than those of any other country." New York Times, January 8, 2001, under a headline "Argentina Devalues, and the Spanish Feel the Loss".

So, to damage the OTHER pipeline consortium headed by the Argentine firm Bridas, George W. Bush was adamant. Argentina would get no help from the IMF.

The rivalry between the Vatican/Spain/Catholic business interests and Great Britain has been going on for centuries. So, when Argentina needed to be bailed out, as in the past, by the IMF, well, Unocal/Bush decided to withhold IMF help from Argentina which went into default of about 132 Billion Dollars of foreign debt.

The Argentine firm, Bridas, heading up the consortium competing with Unocal/Bush, was still ready to go ahead with their Afghanistan pipeline plan AFTER the Unocal/Bush plan with Osama bin Laden and Taliban went sour just prior to September 11, 2001.

How do you wreck a pipeline deal for Afghanistan of a competitor group? Simple. You wreck Argentina/Vatican Bank/Spain/Catholic Business Interests. Call it a natural happening. Call it sinister.

Whatever.

The new Afghan interim strongman selected by the U.S. and Great Britain is Hamid Karzai. Should it surprise savvy sorts that HE has been a consultant to Unocal. Referred to in the major French newspaper LeMonde, just before Christmas, 2001, as translated as they said of Karzai, "...in the USA, where he acted, for a while, as a consultant for the American oil company Unocal, at the time it was considering building a pipeline in Afghanistan...."

end quote.

UNOCAL was also clearly concerned about its past ties to the Taliban. On September 14, just three days after terrorists of the Afghan-base al Qaeda movement crashed their planes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon, UNOCAL issued the following statement: "The company is not supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan in any way whatsoever. Nor do we have any project or involvement in Afghanistan. Beginning in late 1997, Unocal was a member of a multinational consortium that was evaluating construction of a Central Asia Gas pipeline between Turkmenistan and Pakistan [via western Afghanistan]. Our company has had no further role in developing or funding that project or any other project that might involve the Taliban."

The Bush Oil Team, which can now rely on the support of the interim Prime Minister of Afghanistan, may think that war and oil profits mix. But there is simply too much evidence that the War in Afghanistan was primarily about building UNOCAL's pipeline, not about fighting terrorism.

Until that pipeline is built and secured, the U.S. military will stay on assignment in Afghanistan.

In the meantime the Russians have built pipelines to divert the Caspian oil and natural gas reserves north to Russia, west to Europe and east to China. Checkmate.

Men are not natural born killers. The natural inclination of men is to create, not destroy.

They are made into killers by corporations, and the governments that serve those systems of power in wars fabricated to serve their desire for dominion over resources.

....and NO, I do not believe what I see and hear on television. I question everything and research my own opinions.
 
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Sure, you don't believe everything you see and hear on television, but apparently you believe what you read on the internet.

Nice copy and paste, buddy. For those who don't know, here is the link to the (if not 'a') website that gleno copied his big speech from.

http://www.rense.com/general19/pipe.htm

It's an article written by Sherman Skolnick, a well known conspiracy theorist.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman_Skolnick

So first off, if you are going to copy and paste someone else's work, at least put who it was written by. At least that way if the ideas put to words are foolish, as they obviously are, you can claim that you didn't write it.

Next, the Afghanistan oil pipeline project was called off because of the civil war. Common sense, you don't put an oil pipeline in a country that's completely torn apart by war. Ever since the times of Alexander the Great and Gangis Khan, this country has been razed to the ground by war after war. People have fought over this land due to it's strategic location for trade.

All war aside, the oil pipeline would work great. It would be a huge economic boost for this country, and the entire region, and perhaps dislodge the 'third world' status from this land.

But there is a war, and I am fighting it. The remnants of the Taliban and fighters from Iran and Pakistan fight against the freedoms we give to the citizens of Afghanistan. Their latest infatuation is with acid. From adding it to IEDs, to throwing into schoolgirls' faces (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081125/ap_on_re_as/as_afghanistan).

This isn't something in the news for me. This isn't something I read about of the internet or see on the television. These are the issues and these are the lives I deal with on a daily basis. You can believe what you read or watch. I will continue to believe what I see with my own eyes.
 
Sure, you don't believe everything you see and hear on television, but apparently you believe what you read on the internet.

Nice copy and paste, buddy. For those who don't know, here is the link to the (if not 'a') website that gleno copied his big speech from.

http://www.rense.com/general19/pipe.htm

It's an article written by Sherman Skolnick, a well known conspiracy theorist.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman_Skolnick

So first off, if you are going to copy and paste someone else's work, at least put who it was written by. At least that way if the ideas put to words are foolish, as they obviously are, you can claim that you didn't write it.

Next, the Afghanistan oil pipeline project was called off because of the civil war. Common sense, you don't put an oil pipeline in a country that's completely torn apart by war. Ever since the times of Alexander the Great and Gangis Khan, this country has been razed to the ground by war after war. People have fought over this land due to it's strategic location for trade.

All war aside, the oil pipeline would work great. It would be a huge economic boost for this country, and the entire region, and perhaps dislodge the 'third world' status from this land.

But there is a war, and I am fighting it. The remnants of the Taliban and fighters from Iran and Pakistan fight against the freedoms we give to the citizens of Afghanistan. Their latest infatuation is with acid. From adding it to IEDs, to throwing into schoolgirls' faces (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081125/ap_on_re_as/as_afghanistan).

This isn't something in the news for me. This isn't something I read about of the internet or see on the television. These are the issues and these are the lives I deal with on a daily basis. You can believe what you read or watch. I will continue to believe what I see with my own eyes.

My apologies for not including the missing citation. If you examine my other posts you will know it is my usual habit to include sources. I have made the required correction to include the citation.

Whether you view Skolnik as a conspiracy theorist, a journalist or a researcher is immaterial because his sources are included in the citation. They are from the public record and they DO check out. But don't just take my word for it. You can find the verifying testimony from UNOCAL's own CEO in the record's of the 1998 U.S. congressional hearings.

In this account (which history has subsequently shown to be accurate) you have a thumbnail sketch of the 'big game' that is going on behind fabricated war.

Afghanistan. Russia wanted it. Tried. Failed. The Taliban were trained and installed (by the U.S. intelligence services at the behest of corporate interests represented in the U.S. and other foreign governments) to foil them. Now their asset can't be controlled. They will not be slaves and view international forces in their country as occupying invaders.

The disgusting practice of disfiguring any persons face with acid or any other weapon is abhorrent and horrific. The general population simply want (all) the horror to stop.

None of this changes the fact that Afghanistan is still coveted by the western oil cartels for it's strategic access to resources and that is why you are fighting this war which still isn't paid for. Obama's stated intention of scaling back operations in Iraq and focusing on Afghanistan is simply a more economically efficient use of military resources to achieve this end. If there was no strategic reason to be there the U.S. would not be exporting 'freedoms'.

Keep safe and help those that you can....and I mean this sincerely.
 

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